Published 07|09|09

Market monitor

In this section we highlight some of the key trends emerging this quarter from the data we collect on the UK telecommunications sector.

Fixed

• Total fixed line revenues fell by 4.4% year-on-year to £2.2bn in Q1 2009, with call revenues falling by 7.6% and rental revenues by 1.5%.
• Fixed voice call volumes (excluding NTS calls) fell by 7.5% year-on-year to 34.9 billion minutes in Q1 2009.
• This was driven by a 9.2% fall in the volume of calls to mobile numbers. Calls to UK geographic numbers increased by 1.2% between Q1 2008 and Q1 2009.

Internet

• The number of UK residential and small business broadband connections increased by 281k (1.6%) to 17.6 million during the quarter (up 8.4% year-on-year), with the majority of this growth being as a result of increasing numbers of LLU-based connections.
• There was little change in BT’s retail broadband market share which fell from 26.5% at the end of March 2008 to 26.4% at the end of March 2009.

Mobile ^(-1-)

• Total revenue across the UK’s four largest mobile operators fell by 3.7% between Q1 2008 and Q1 2009.  
• Total call volumes across the four operators increased by 6.8% year-on-year to 25.7 billion minutes in Q1 2009, driven by a 7.1% increase in calls volumes to UK numbers and a 9.0% rise in international call volumes. Roaming call volumes were 13.6% lower than in Q1 2008.
• Messaging volumes increased by 26.1% between Q1 2008 and Q1 2009; however, quarter-on-quarter growth slowed to 4% in Q1 2009 compared to 11% in Q4 2008. On average, subscribers among the four largest mobile operators sent nearly 104 messages per month in Q1 2009 compared to 84 in Q1 2008.
• The number of subscribers declined by 1% in Q1 2009 compared to the previous quarter but was 1% higher than Q1 2008. Post-pay subscribers accounted for 38% of total subscribers in Q1 2009, compared to 36% in Q1 2008.  

Footnotes:

  1.-The commentary provided only refers to the four mobile operators covered in this report.